U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' remarks sound awfully similar to
President Obama's call for appointing a Justice who has empathy with the people
whose Court's decision impacts. If Thomas were interested in isolating himself
from on people, he would have decided to stay in the isolated halls of the
Supreme Court. So what's the beef about with Republicans about appointing a
judge who is interested in getting out in public and meeting the people, if
Clarence Thomas seems to imply that he to is glad to get out from the marble
halls of the Court?

All previous comments have focused on the minuscule tangentia of this event and
have missed the real issue. The real issue is Thomas' complete failure to
mention how judicial activism is ruining the Supreme Court.

Time and
time again, the court has turned the Constitution on its head in order to
legislate from the bench. The modern court has not hesitated to violate the
separation of powers doctrine by ignoring the will of the people and creating
new laws out of thin air. As just one example, this is how abortion was forced
on the American people.

It is time for the court to cease judicial
activism and instead, return to the role for which the Founding Fathers
established it.

FYI, each attorney (or the attorney's employer) pays hundreds of dollars to
attend the annual bar convention. No taxpayer funds are used for the event.
The bar also has a large convention each year in St. George, Utah.

The Utah State Bar is not funded by taxpayers. It is funded through the license
fees of attorneys. The only taxpayer funds would be for government attorneys
and judges whose travel is paid by their agency (not all of them are funded by
the agency).

Some would say the present conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has
begun a new wave of judicial activism, so that those who are arguing for more
restraint might by implication to calling for a return to the more modest
approaches of middle of the road justices like the first female justice, Sandra
Day O'Connor. Robert, along with Scalia, and Alito have begun to assert their
personal policy preferences towards support of corporate business, national
security, criminal punishment decisions.

You're talking, of course, about decisions like the
Citizens United case, when Thomas was an activist justice. You're right. That
type of activism is inappropriate.

***. . . As just one
example, this is how abortion was forced on the American people.***

I'm not aware that anyone in the United States was forced to have an abortion.
The only thing the Court did was restore to women the right to determine
whether to continue a pregnancy -- the same right that women had in Colonial
times, when termination of pregnancy was not barred prior to quickening (which
happened 4-5 months in gestation).

***It is time for the court
to cease judicial activism and instead, return to the role for which the
Founding Fathers established it.***

Agreed, and that means curtailing
the influence of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito. Get the court back to the
centrist position where it belongs, and away from the far right authoritarians
who now who strongly influence it (and control it for the most part).

***Some would say the present
conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has begun a new wave of judicial
activism, so that those who are arguing for more restraint might by implication
to calling for a return to the more modest approaches of middle of the road
justices like the first female justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. Robert, along with
Scalia, and Alito have begun to assert their personal policy preferences towards
support of corporate business, national security, criminal punishment decisions.
***

Very true, and exactly right. Get the court back to the centrist
position where it was prior to the Court was skewed with the appointment of
Roberts and Alito.

If you've ever been to Sun Valley in the summer, you know why the bar and others
go there- Ketchum is like Utah central all summer and one of the best places to
unwind for a few days- a road trip and nice place at the end is always goo for
the soul

The difficulty in the selection of U.S. Supreme Court justices is that it is
likely impossible to appoint a justice without moral, worldview principles being
part of the process and the nominee's personality. Unless America decides to
replace humans with robots than there will always be political and ideological
beliefs and reasons for the appointment of justices to this court. How the
Constitution is interpreted is in itself a political decision, fraught with both
liberal and consevative beliefs that even taken to the extreme will result in
contradictions within individual decisions when there will be times that the
same person will want local and state rights interpretation or at other times a
federal authority interpretation in order to see their own beliefs about a
particular law carried out or voided. Perhaps Americans would be better off to
just acknowledge that interpreting the Constitution is in the eye of the
beholder and their own ultimate belief in how they believe the court should rule
and what they want the result to be.

I attended his speech. I am not a big fan of his 'judicial philosohy' - I
simply do not think it is a good policy, nor entirely possible, to strive to
interpret our constitution according to 'original intent'(an approach I've
always found to be ironic coming from a black guy). However, I did enjoy
Justice Thomas's speech. I found him to be witty, articulate, and friendly. He
stressed that there are not political divisions among the justices. He seems to
have a genuine affinity for every justice with whom he has worked, even those
with whom he has disagreed. He understands that everyone on the Court is looking
for the right decision, but they are different, intelligent, people, who often
see different solutions to a problem. That is how the Court should be, and the
elected branches could use more of it. Government should not be war among
political parties. It should be a place where our representatives look for
solutions to our problems. The discourse in this country needs to be more
civil, and I thought Justice Thomas's speech provided an excellent lesson in
that.